


Winter's Soldier

by Kayasurin



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Disabled Character, In which Jack avoids becoming a fearling by a hand, M/M, Slow Burn, Warnings for past and dubious medical practices, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-16 23:41:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9294848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kayasurin/pseuds/Kayasurin
Summary: It's not like Jack meant to keep it a secret from the others, but he kind of kept his arm a secret from the others.Now if only he can figure out why the whole thing bothers Bunny so much.





	1. Chapter 1

The kids' reactions to the workshop was nice. Jack trailed along behind them, hands tucked into his pockets, staff pinched tight under his arm. North had prepped the place beautifully; it was just as busy as Jack's first visit, but the airplanes and toy 'coptors were all too high to threaten the yeti, never mind kids who were still stuck talking to _Jack's_ diaphragm. The elves were out in force, but armed with paint brushes, carpentry tools sized for their little hands, and sewing kits. Five were working on a North-sized boot, and it was adorable. The yeti were hard at work; harder, in fact, than when they were _actually_ working.

Everyone wanted to look good for the believers. Kinda like having the Big Boss show up and start poking around, he supposed.

Speaking of big bosses...

"Ah!" North stopped at the top of the stairs, arms open wide. "There you are! Was thinking you had gotten lost, maybe, workshop is big place. Come, come! Cookies and milk this way!"

Pippa dropped back and grinned up at Jack. "You'd think we were six."

"You don't like cookies and milk?" Jack wrinkled his nose.

"Dude, of course I do. I even eat them properly, Mr. Mash it all up and use a fork." Pippa elbowed him in the side, and darted back up to join the group. She and Cupcake grabbed Sophie's hands and helped her up the stairs, not that the girl really needed it. She seemed to enjoy it, though, so Jack kept his mouth shut.

... It actually did look fun. Instead of walking up the stairs, Sophie was lifted up between the girls and carried. Pity the only people who could do that for Jack were yeti. They'd probably drop him. He'd run the power point during North's last lecture, after all.

At the top of the stairs, the kids oggled the giant globe. Jack started translating some of the nicer commentary North had put down, before Bunny stepped out of the shadows. Since Bunny was way more interesting than a globe, even if it was glowing and had fish commentary written everywhere, Jack could thankfully stop translating.

There wasn't much that was kid appropriate on that thing. What even, North, that was not cool. Santa wasn't supposed to cuss.

"'Lo there, short pants." Bunny grinned down at Sophie, who had immediately dropped everything to glomp him. She only came up to his knee. "Rest of you want cookies right?"

"Are they chocolate chip?" Monty grinned at Bunny, a sly twist of his lips Jack had totally taught him. He was so proud of the kid his heart threatened to burst.

"I'm sure we can find some," Bunny drawled. "And you, little miss... carrots."

"I like cookies," Sophie said, pulling away just enough to look up at Bunny. "Oatmeal. And cranberries!"

"Only kid who doesn't like chocolate chip," Jack teased, and freed one hand to start urging the kids forward again. He didn't have to do much urging, they were pretty happy to be there.

Bunny scooped Sophie up in one arm, and walked beside Jack. Sophie was clearly happy with her place, because she beamed down at Jack, both hands tangled in Bunny's fur.

"He can't have chocolate," she said, and patted Bunny on the upper arm. "So we'll share the oatmeal."

Bunny looked a little discomforted by that, probably because Sophie's version of 'share' was 'pick all the cranberries out, eat half the cookie, and then give Bunny the other half'. But whatever, she was five, and at least she was eating fruit.

"You are a generous soul," Jack said solemnly. "Jamie won't share with me at all."

"He's a boy," Sophie said, just as solemnly. "You have to sit on his head before he'll share."

"I really don't want Jack sitting on me," Jamie put in. He looked dubious. "He's heavy."

"You just don't want to share the cookies. Maybe an arm wrestle."

"You cheat, you cheating cheater."

Maybe. A little. Or a lot. Depended on how you looked at it. "Lies."

They rounded the corner, and came to the sitting room. The double doors had been flung wide, and the plush, insanely comfortable couches and chairs had been moved from their usual places along the walls to a more intimate cluster around several coffee tables. Plates of cookies and jugs of milk, plus a few trays of vegetables and fruit slices, made up the offerings.

"Yum," Caleb said.

"You are in luck," North said, gesturing to the mini-feast. "Tooth is not here yet to nag about the teeth and the sugar. So come, tuck in!"

"Pretty sure it's less nagging and more fear of hyperactive kids," Claude pointed out.

"You can tell her that." Cupcake patted Claude on the shoulder, and got a small plate. She began piling it high with snickerdoodles and, of course, chocolate chip cookies. "I'll be behind the couch when you do."

"Hiding," Jamie said, getting his own plate. After a second, he paused and lifted a second, offered it to Jack.

"Nah. I'm good." That, and he'd wait to see what was left after the hoards were done. Probably plenty of fruit and vegetables, which honestly was Jack's preference. Sugar... Sugar hadn't been something in plentiful supply when he'd been growing up, as either a human or a spirit. He preferred the natural sweetness to the artificial one.

"You should take the plate anyways."

"There's enough plates." Still, Jack took it, and settled down on a chair. He almost stabbed the back of the chair with his staff, and it took a bit of shifting before he could sit without putting his staff down. Put it down, it'd be guaranteed that he wouldn't be able to pick it up for a few hours. Stupid joints.

North gave him a weird look, and the expression on Bunny's face defied description, but the kids politely ignored his troubles. Pippa put a handful of apple slices on his plate.

"Thank you," he said, and munched on apple slices until the kids had settled down. The cookies, as expected, were decimated. Plenty of his preferred fruit and vegetables, though, so he leaned forward and quickly loaded up.

The kids were good and wise, and kept quiet while munching and dunking their cookies. Bunny, resigned expression solidly in place except any time Sophie was looking at him, accepted half-eaten oatmeal cookies with the cranberries picked out. North stood off to one side muttering orders to a relay of elves.

It was guaranteed not to last.

"So," Jamie said, and set his empty glass and plate down on the table. "Not that it's not nice to hang out here or anything, but, uh, why are we here? Also, it's totally not suspicious Tooth and Sandy haven't arrived yet."

Six out of seven kids beamed at the three Guardians with bright, expectant smiles. The seventh gave Bunny half an oatmeal cookie to eat.

Jack was _so proud_.

North and Bunny shared an eloquent look. Bunny took a resigned bite of the oatmeal cookie, and cuddled Sophie a little closer.

"Does it have anything to do with the Boggart?" Pippa asked, looking innocent.

"The Abonsam?" Jamie asked, suddenly glum. In all fairness, Sophie had saved him with a My Little Pony.

"The Babadook," Caleb and Claude chorused. They gave each other high fives.

"Maybe it's something to do with the Zan - Xiang Yao," Monty suggested.

Cupcake folded her arms and frowned at Jack. "I liked the Grim. Probably the only dog my parents will ever let me have."

"Because they can't see him," Jack reminded her. "Anyways, he was old and tired, you'd really make him stick around and work? He was probably older than I was. Or North." Well, technically speaking Jack was older than North, but he looked younger, so...

"He was cute," Cupcake muttered.

North and Bunny shared another look, eyes wide. "That is... a lot," North said.

"Think we only knew about the Babadook," Bunny added.

Jack grinned at them. "Then I'm doing my job."

"Right up until the Grim tried to eat you," Caleb said. "How's the arm?"

"He didn't try to eat Jack!" Cupcake hissed. "He was playing!"

The Grim had been... doing _something_. It hadn't been friendly. "My arm's fine, Caleb. Thanks for asking."

Cupcake looked put out at the allegations against her Grim, but kept her mouth shut. Jack reached over and ruffled her hair, the strands catching on the fine velvet of his glove. He didn't mention the tear on the back of the glove where the Grim's tooth had drawn blood.

North sighed, and moved over to the nearest armchair. "So you noticed."

"Yeah," Monty drawled. "I mean, at this point the weatherman's never going to stop crying."

"I _said_ I was _sorry_!" Jack rubbed his cheek, aware he was blushing and unable to stop. Fighting child-eating monsters was easier if he used magic, side effect of the creatures using magic just to exist. They weren't, generally, like the more... personable spirits? Spirits like the Guardians, or the various pantheons, who'd been _people_ before they'd been _more_.  At any rate, the random patches of snow and ice had the adults of Burgess all in an uproar, and at least one person had been screaming about hell freezing over before his friends took him home to sober up.

Bunny sighed, and rubbed his cheek against Sophie's hair. "The problem is, you lot have all been marked," he said. "It's one thing to believe. It's another to know."

"I was worried," Jamie mused, perking back up. "I kinda figured we'd all turn, I dunno, thirteen and then poof. Forget."

North shook his head. "Unfortunately, no. You would be safer if that were how it worked. Tooth and Sandy are warding your homes right now."

"Their magic is the best for it," Jack added. Something to do with boundaries, those best at slipping past them also the best at reinforcing them. Which probably should've included Santa, but that was a provisional, one-night-a-year thing, apparently.

And no one was willing to wait for Christmas. It was June. The attacks were getting more and more frequent. The Grim hadn't been the last straw; it'd been _yesterday_.

"Will you have to do that when we move out?" Pippa asked. "Or - I live with my dad on the weekends -"

"They're getting his house too," Bunny promised. "And maybe. Depends on how well you guys manage your magic lessons."

Even Sophie perked up at that. "Our what?" Claude asked. He wasn't the only one with an incredulous smile spreading across his face, but he was the first.

"See, that's the problem," Jack said, taking up the explanation. They'd explained it all to him yesterday, so he wasn't likely to get anything wrong. "You've been marked, which means you've... got the seeds of a magical core in you all. Probably my fault," he added, not at all bothered by the idea. "From all the visiting I've been doing."

"Or the books North's lent me?" Jamie asked. A few of the other kids glanced at each other and snickered.

"Yeah, or that," Jack said, to cover up the glare Bunny was directing at North. There might have been a whiff of singed hair, or maybe that was just Jack's imagination. "But anyways, none of you are mages _yet_. But you could be, if you practiced and stuff. And then you'd be able to... work in both worlds, guess you could say. Still human, but able to do some spirit-level stuff, like wards and, I don't know, glow-bulbs."

"We could fight monsters?" Cupcake brightened up from her sulk. "Like Buffy?"

"Who?" Bunny asked.

"The vampire slayer."

Jack snorted, and shook his head. If Bunny held Sophie any tighter, she'd smack him. "No vampire slaying. Well, I mean," he added, because Cupcake looked so disappointed, "I wouldn't rule it out, but you'd have to travel to find one. They're an endangered species these days."

"Probably for the best."

"No one really likes them," Jack agreed. "Right, so, magic. You guys could have it, if you wanted. The bad things don't like that. Because bad things..." He sighed.

"They can't see people not attacking them, because they wouldn't ever not attack someone else?" Caleb suggested.

"Yeah, pretty much."

Jamie cleared his throat. "So, we're here to stay safe while Tooth and Sandy put up force fields around our houses, but what about when we're not at home? School and things."

"Oh, that!" North bounded to his feet and hurried over to the other side of the room. "Personal protection for everyone!"

Cupcake, eldest of the kids, blinked and looked over at Jack. "He has no idea what that sounded like, does he?"

"Just finished that section of health class, huh?" Jack asked. Bunny, a few feet away, choked on air. Served him right for listening in on a personal conversation.

Cupcake snickered at Bunny, but at that point North returned, a stack of small boxes in hand. He began handing them out, each box with a kid's name on it. Sophie tore hers open, and pulled out a watch.

"Dory! Why do I have a watch?"

"Personal shield," Bunny said, and helped her put it on. "And if something nasty attacks you, it'll let us know and we'll come running."

Sophie blinked up at him, and then patted him on the cheek. "Jack's always around," she said. "But you can fight too. You can be a battle couple!"

Jack blinked, and looked over at Jamie. "The heck kinda shows does the squirt watch?"

Jamie squinted at his sister. "I'm almost afraid to ask."

"Sophie," Jack said, rescuing Bunny. "Battle couples are married. Bunny and I aren't married."

Figured Tooth and Sandy would arrive in time to hear that.

"Why not?" Tooth asked, seraphic and smiling. "If you're married, you can be a battle couple."

"Hi Fairy Queen!" Sophie turned, knees digging into Bunny's thigh, and waved. "You can be the flower girl."

"Thank you, my dear, but I shall have to officiate the ceremony. You can be the flower girl. Where did you even hear about battle couples?" Tooth accepted a glass of water North had hidden somewhere, and turned to Sandy. "Not you, I hope."

Sandy put a halo over his head, and then shrugged.

"You're right, not really your thing... Sophie?"

"Rangers!" the little girl chirped, bouncing a bit. Bunny winced, and carefully resettled her so his thigh wasn't mangled. "Power Rangers! Mia and Spike are battle couples!"

"Mia and Spike..." Jamie hid his face in his hands. "No, Sophie. No. Spike's a dog. A _dog_."

"Bunny's a Bunny."

Jack grinned at said rabbit, and set his empty plate down on the coffee table. "Right, get your watches on, kids. Safety first."

"You're such a dork," Pippa muttered, and fumbled her watch on. The rest of the kids followed suit, until everyone had a watch on their wrist.

Tooth clapped her hands. "Alright, ground rules," she said. "And this is very important."

Jack left Tooth to lay down the law; the kids were good ones, they'd listen and follow direction. He raised his eyebrows at Sandy, who immediately began flashing images at him. Jack was a little better at translating them, so he got the gist. Houses warded, and they'd even managed to do the school, too. No one had figured they would, it being a public building, but new surprises every day.

"That's cool," Jack said, and held his hand out for a fist bump. Sandy bumped fists, and then poked at the tear in Jack's glove. "Grim tooth."

In retrospect, he should've paid more attention to the kids. The boys, at least. Because while Sophie's watch was purely defensive... Well, North had made threatening noises about arming the older kids with something a bit more offensive, but Jack hadn't thought he'd _do_ it.

On the other hand, being able to swing something like the magic version of a riot shield wasn't that offensive, so far as attacks went.

Except when the blow was a surprise.

It wasn't even a hard blow, Jack thought, blinking at the floor. He'd barely been brushed by it. But nope, sudden trip to the floor, very fun. Landed on his bad shoulder, though his staff was fine, thank god.

"Ow," he decided, and pushed up on one arm. "Who hit me?"

"Sorry, Jack," Monty said, pressing a button on the watch. The riot-shield thing went away. "I think these things take the amount of force we put into a blow and increase it hundred-fold. Um, are you okay?"

"Surprised, mostly." Though there'd been a suspicious crunch... Sandy offered him a hand up, and Jack took it. His right hand slid out of his pocket as he moved, and his staff fell to the floor with a clatter. He was just looking down at it when he felt something in his shoulder give way.

And then his arm slipped out of his sleeve and fell on the floor.


	2. Chapter 2

Aster screamed.

The sound was high and thin and utterly terrified. He reached pitches he had thought the realm of little girls, or human men who'd just been kicked in the bollocks on helium.

Jack's _arm_ was on the _floor_.

So he screamed, and he froze, Sophie clutched in one arm and half an oatmeal cookie in his other hand. Jack's arm was on the floor and he screamed and did _nothing_.

North surged forward like a tidal wave, grabbing Jack up by the arm and his shoulder, then making a face - horror and disbelief and shock. He shifted, hand leaving Jack's shoulder and clamping down on the young man's hip in a way that'd leave bruises but also wouldn't hurt his shoulder, which...

... wasn't gushing blood?

That could've been Tooth's doing, or Sandy's; they'd both reacted at the same time, hands and sand clamped down over the stump to hold in the blood. Sandy's symbols were nonsense, panic and disbelief, and Tooth's babbling was only slightly more coherent.

Jack, pale - paler than usual? Blood loss? Shock? He wasn't _dying_ , was he? - kept staring at them all, expressionless. Shock. Definitely shock.

Aster wheezed, pain in his chest reminding him that yes, immortal or not he still needed to breathe. There wasn't much he could do for Jack, no room, but the kids had to be terrified. Jack's _arm_ had just fallen off. It was amazing no one else had screamed.

... The kids were eating cookies.

Aster stared. And then he pointed the oatmeal cookie he was still holding.

Cupcake raised her eyebrows; the rest of them were still watching the Guardians like they were _all_ aliens. With two heads. Possibly tentacles. "What?" Cupcake asked, sounding confused.

He flailed. A little bit. He was still holding Sophie, he couldn't gesture too wildly. "Jack's bloody arm just fell off!"

Aster flinched automatically after; his mother would've washed his mouth out with soaproot for swearing like that. Millions of years after his death, and he still expected an iron grip to clamp down on his lower jaw and that disappointed tone of voice as she started scrubbing. His mom had been tolerant of many, many things that other people hadn't been, but swearing was the one thing she hadn't allowed.

He'd been the only soldier not to swear, and as a result he'd ended up in front of news crews more than he'd have preferred.

... Not the point.

"Jack's arm, and you, and where...?"

Where was the blood? Even with Tooth and Sandy doing their thing, the... the arm should've still been leaking, but it wasn't. It was just lying there on the floor, silvery and with a few scattered gears... by the... wait.

"Gears?"

Sophie tugged on his shoulder fur. "Didn't you know?" she asked, sounding confused. "Jack showed us months and months ago."

"Only six weeks," Jamie corrected. "Unless he told you before he told the rest of us."

"He said it was a secret."

What. Even. Was going. On.

Aster set Sophie down on his abandoned seat, and picked up the arm. It was heavier than he'd expected, but that was probably because it appeared to be made out of some kind of metal. Not a kind he'd ever seen before, some combination of magic and iron if he was any judge, but metal. Not flesh. A gear, smaller than Sophie's littlest fingernail, dropped from the shattered top.

"Guys," he said, and held up the arm. North at first looked horrified at the apparent callousness, and then confused. Tooth moved right to disbelief, and stopped clamping down on Jack's shoulder.

It took Sandy the longest, but the second he realized what, exactly, Aster was trying to imply, he switched from panicked to, well, ranting. His symbols went too quickly, blurred together too much, for even Aster to figure out. The others didn't stand a chance, and clearly didn't even try.

North put Jack down. "Jack?"

"Um." Jack blinked, and then reached across himself to rub his hip. "I guess I forgot to tell you guys, didn't I?"

It was almost fitting that, in the silence that fell after that comment, Monty spoke up.

"This is better than Star Wars."

* * *

Tiny, impressionable children bundled away back home, Aster collapsed into the nearest chair and shook. He felt sick. He felt actually, physically sick. Because yes, Jack wasn't bleeding to death, it wasn't his actual arm that had fallen off, just a prosthetic. But in order to have a prosthetic he was obviously missing at least one arm, and maybe it was two, but at least one, and the prosthetic had the full biceps brachii and triceps brachii, so it went all the way to the shoulder.

Maybe higher.

Bloody, buggering - how much of Jack was prosthetic, anyways?

"Just the arm," Jack said, and Aster nearly jumped out of his fur.

"I said that out loud?" he asked, voice weak and trembling. Just like his stomach. All those oatmeal cookies weren't sitting too good, anymore.

"Yeah." Jack shrugged, his empty sleeve doing strange things. "C'mon, let's get this over with." After a second, where Aster just stared at him, Jack looked around. "You're still in the entryway, Bugs."

Oh. Right.

Jack shifted close to him, empty sleeve and shoulder next to Aster. "C'mon, lean on me. We're not going too far. I think you're in shock, by the way, which means your future involves warm blankets and mugs of hot cider."

"But," Aster said, and rested his hand on Jack's shoulder. He could.... oh. He could feel it, through the soft cotton of Jack's sweater. The line, where flesh became... not.

"Couch, Bunny," Jack said, voice warm. "Let's go. Talking once you're buried in blankets."

That did sound good. He wanted to burrow, a bit, hide away from things like arms falling off and realizing exactly how much arm Jack had clearly lost.

He was wobbling by the time they reached the meeting room, a cold pit in his stomach. Felt like his veins were frosting over, not the nice, pretty fern patterns Jack specialized and spread all over the Warren's walls, but thick, spiky nonsense, the kind that never melted properly and made grumpy crunching sounds when walked on.

The couch was big, and soft, and Aster curled up into a tight little ball in one corner. Jack sighed at the sight, and grabbed several of North's blankets, spread them over Aster on at a time, moving easily with only one arm. His left arm, Aster noticed, and it was the right that had been put on the table, a small dish full of shining, tiny gears plucked from the floor.

Aster pulled the blankets up over his head, until he was wrapped up and safe and warm. He snuffled at the fabric; smelt like North, and a touch of wood smoke, and an even fainter hint of tobacco. It was a comfortable scent, familiar, so even though that was Jack's _arm_ on the table, Aster couldn't get too worked up about it at the moment.

North cleared his throat, and Aster forced himself to pay attention, to note where the others were and what they were doing. He wanted to just focus on his hidey-hole, on the warm and the weight of the blankets, the scents and he wanted to watch Jack, but he couldn't just do that. It wasn't fair to the others.

"Jack," North said, and leaned forward in his chair. "Jack. You. You, your arm...?"

Jack stood in the middle of the room, beside the table with his arm on it. North sat in his chair, and Tooth sat in another chair on the other side of the table. Bunny was in his huddle on the couch, and Sandy hovered, across from Aster and between North and Tooth. They made the points of a diamond, because... diamonds were a nicer shape than squares. So there. Diamond.

"Yes," Jack said, the barest hint of a smile curving his lips. "My arm. So, uh, I have a prosthetic." He paused, and then pulled his glove off with his teeth. Aster glanced over at Tooth as she fluttered and sighed at the sight. He didn't get it. They were teeth. Straight, white, not rotting away in Jack's mouth. So?

Aster looked back at Jack, who shrugged and pulled his sweater up on his right side, revealing his stomach and sides and part of his chest, as he reached up and grasped something on his shoulder. Aster heard a quiet sound, too quiet for human ears to pick up, as metal chinked against metal.

He should have been paying more attention to the remains of the prosthetic as Jack pulled it free, but Aster was an artist. His eye was drawn by the subtle lines and shadows, where the tops of Jack's hipbones showed above his waistline. The play of skin and muscle in his abdominals as he shifted, pulling the prosthetic free and turned to set it down on the table beside the rest of his arm. And then, of course, Jack tugged his sweater back down, hiding those subtleties away.

Jack cleared his throat. Aster blinked at him, and then finally, finally looked at the shoulder section of the prosthetic.

Jack had set it outside-down. So he could see that the metal formed a thin shell, perfectly contoured to fit over the winter spirit's shoulder. Just where the biceps brachii and triceps brachii began, at the armpit, was where the prosthetic had broken.

The rest of the prosthetic had been solid, heavy. Aster shuddered. That was most - hell, not just most, essentially _all_ \- of Jack's arm gone.

He bit back a sad whine at the thought, and huddled a bit more in his blankets to make up for it.

"So, uh, this is from back in..." Jack waggled his right shoulder, maybe gesturing with whatever stub was left of his arm, and then shrugged. "Eighteen-sixty-eight?"

Aster sat up, blankets falling away from his head. "Easter Sunday?"

Why did the winter spirit look so amused. "Sorta. Technically. Yeah. After our fight, though. Don't worry, you didn't miss... this." He gestured at his empty sleeve.

He turned to the others. "So, morning of Easter Sunday... Okay, technically still Saturday Night. Bunny and I crossed paths, a bit of winter-spring rivalry got knocked up, then we went our separate ways."

Aster nodded. Though, to hear the usual gossip, instead of just insulting each other for a few minutes, they'd had a knock-down drag-out fight. Or shagged. Some gossip had them doing both. And the blizzard ranged from a light dusting of snow to a multi-day monstrosity that'd buried the East Coast for weeks, and never mind they'd been closer to the center of North America than either coast.

"I ducked into some forest, 'cause reasons, and just around false dawn I got attacked by a... a thing with way too many legs, tentacles, and teeth." Jack shuddered. "It was like this mutant hybrid of a centipede and an octopus, it was... ick."

Aster blinked. Blinked again. Finally looked over at the others, because had Jack just said...?

North was staring at Jack like the bloke had started singing karaoke. Or declared himself the Grand High Poobah of The Island of Misfit Toys, bow before him. Something absurd.

Tooth was just gaping. Not as if Jack had done something insane, as such, and more like she just couldn't believe what she'd just heard.

Sandy had his head in his hands. His shoulders were shaking. Aster couldn't tell, from this angle, if it was laughter or tears.

"Anyways," Jack said, his empty sleeve fluttering. Now that Aster thought about it, most of the time Jack gestured with his right hand, held onto his staff with his left. So that was... probably what he was trying to do, muscle memory from moving the prosthetic around. "I got attacked by the mutant-demon octopus. It got me on the hand, then I got away. I figured I was okay, but a few hours later my hand turned into tentacles."

Aster couldn't suppress the whimper this time.

"So I cut my hand off."

North gagged. Jack stared at him, no more than mildly confused, until the Russian toymaker got himself back under control.

"Sorry," North said, sounding sad instead. "Continue, please."

"Okay, I know people are kinda bothered by the whole self-amputation thing," Jack said, sounding as if he didn't understand it at all. "But I would like to point out that this sort of thing is... not unheard of. The self-amputation, not the mutant octopus tentacle thing. Uh. Anyways, it's not... it was a long time ago. I dealt with it. I am a dealer. But not of drugs."

Sandy flicked a tendril of dreamsand against Jack's forehead, and levelled a _look_ at Jack.

"Yeah, yeah, getting on with it. Anyways, the amputation seemed to stop the demon octopus thing. But I also kinda made it snow a lot?" He glanced over at Aster. "Sorry about that."

Sorry about... Aster flattened his ears, until they were pressed almost painfully tight against his skull. "No worries," he said, forcing the words out past the lump in his throat. "Now I know what was behind it. I mean. Understandable, right mate?"

"Right," Jack said, expression shifting to relief. "Anyways, so. Uh, that happened, then I went home. At which point I realized I had gas gangrene and ended up with a stub. You don't need the details."

"Jack," Tooth said, voice wavering the slightest bit. "You were _alone_? You - wasn't there _anyone_ who -"

Right, not shock. Protective rage. Even if it was retrospective.

Jack stared at her, and then his eyes widened with realization. "No, you are not allowed to go out and kill people." Or maybe not.

"I am not -"

"The only person allowed to punch people rude to me would be me. Because I have a metal arm. That can punch through sheet steel." Jack looked pleased. "You'd just knock their teeth out and steal 'em."

Tooth scowled at him, feathers fluffing up again as she relaxed. "It's less lethal."

"Where's the fun in that? Yes, _Mother_ , I had someone taking care of me after the whole thing went down." Jack made a face. "If tying me to the bed and forcing soup on me once an hour every hour is taking care of someone, anyways."

"Sounds like Phil," North muttered. Jack's expression twisted to a different, more disdainful one.

"I will never get sick in the Workshop. Never ever. So yeah. Arm came off, I started making prosthetics out of ice. They kept melting, because ice. And then I got that arm," he nodded at the metal on the table, "and huzzah, it works. Except when a Grim tries to tear it off me and damages, uh, a lot of stuff in the shoulder. I'm honestly surprised it didn't fall off earlier."

Aster blinked. And then pulled the blankets the rest of the way over his face.

He was too wobbly to deal with this right now.


	3. Chapter 3

Some days it did not pay to have friends.

Jack ducked the hammer swipe, and held up his arm in supplication. "Can I get some help with this?" he asked, only mildly aggravated. "Please?"

Beira huffed, and lowered her hammer. "Fine. Get in. What happened?"

"Grim attacked the kids, I stopped it, then I landed on my bad shoulder." Jack, as usual, looked up and around the giantess' workshop. It'd been built for a twelve-foot-tall humanoid, and at his own five-foot-four he felt tiny. The ceilings soared overhead, and the nearest chair was almost tall enough to walk under. Without ducking.

Beira swiped at him again, and then waved the hammer at the distant forge. "Told you that join was getting weak."

"You make mountains, lady, you know nothing about metalwork." He grinned, all the same, and hurried across to the forge. It was uncomfortably warm, but he was used to that by now, and fire-heat was different from summer-heat. Jack couldn't explain it, neither could the giantess, but where summer weakened him, fire didn't.

He did feel it was a little weird, since absolutely nowhere in the world had summer temperatures hot enough to _smelt steel_ but then again, he wasn't complaining, either.

The giantess started the bellows, and after a muttered curse, left them to pump on their own. "Let's see the damage, boy."

Jack set his arm down on the anvil, and pulled the shoulder-cap out from under his sweater. As a final flourish, he pulled the bag of spilled gears out from his sweater pocket, and poured it out into Beira's hand. The metal looked almost white next to the dark blue of her skin.

Normally, he was used to seeing it look closer to storm-cloud gray next to _his_ skin.

"Hm." Beira studied the gears, and then bent down to look at where the metal had sheered and broken. "Grim crushed that part, pulled apart those plates..." She looked up, and raised her lone eyebrow. "What happened to the Grim?"

Jack smiled, bright and innocent as fresh snow. "It's very important to neuter your dogs. Otherwise, someone might just kick them between the hind legs. Apparently it's very painful."

"Don't neuter the Grim." With that, Beira went back to looking the prosthetic over, before she settled back on her heels with a grunt. "Those plates will have to be replaced. And if you're going to do anything about the core strut, you'll have to completely dismantle the arm. Never mind _these_." She lifted the handful of gears.

He sighed. "No magic hammer?"

"All it'll do is get it in the right shape. You won't be able to move it, and one bad blow will break it all over again."

"Good enough." Last thing he needed was to flaunt his, heh, _disarming_. "I've got an upgrade back home, I just have to do a final few tweaks."

Beira frowned at him, her single eye dark. "If you're sure. Put that end in the fire, then."

Jack nodded, and repositioned the arm. While the broken end heated, he held the bag open for the gears; he could always reuse them, or melt them down and make something new out of them. Hand free, she put the shoulder section directly into the flames.

If Jack had tried blacksmithing the way the giantess went at it, he'd probably have killed himself. He certainly wouldn't have ended up with anything usable. She reached directly into the flames and handled the glowing metal without a qualm, despite being a winter spirit like he was. Then she positioned the two broken ends together, and just started hitting the two pieces with her hammer.

Jack watched, more than a little envious, as the break mended. She was right, he wouldn't be able to use the arm for anything, her work was only on the exterior, but still. If only he had a magic hammer, it wouldn't take him so long to make each arm!

"There." Beira lifted the arm, and blew on the shoulder. The arm cooled immediately, pinging and twanging as the metal contracted. She handed it over. It looked right, which was the important thing. Around Beira, Jack had no qualms pulling his sweater off and reattaching the arm.

It felt like nothing but deadweight.

"I told you," she said, in response to his wrinkled nose. "Now, run home before my fix wears off."

Jack nodded. "Thanks for lending me your forge."

"Thanks for the hammer, you mean," she grumbled, and waved him off.

He pulled his sweater back on, and flipped his staff up into his hand with one foot. "See you later!"

The giantess grumbled, but didn't swing at him with her hammer, so she couldn't have been too annoyed.

Though annoyed tended to be Beira's default. Jack shook his head, and tucked his unresponsive hand into his pocket. It felt very weird, having nothing but deadweight hanging from his shoulder. The sooner he got back home, the better.

Not that he cared if people knew he had a prosthetic. Most spirits did know. Getting punched in the face with a metal fist tended to give the game away. _He_ cared, though, going around without his prosthetic. He had enough enemies to make it uncomfortable, and the spirits who weren't his enemies tended to stare at his empty sleeve, either looking sick or contemplative or he didn't even know, beyond not liking those expressions.

The wind tossed him from gust to gust, and he grimaced. Maybe that was why he'd held off on telling the Guardians - the _other_ Guardians - about his prosthetic. He'd been barely able to stand the pity, or the dismay, or - weirdly - the betrayal in their expressions. Bunny hadn't been able to _look_ at him after he'd calmed down, and Jack had no idea if it was disgust or pity behind it.

All of a sudden he plummeted out of the air. Jack screeched and kicked, before the wind caught him and tossed him back up and sideways.

"Downdrafts," he spat, and twisted until he was flying upside down. And oh, what was _that_?

Bunny, wandering around a field of pristine snow. That was weird enough to warrant a look, wasn't it?

Jack spun and twirled down, flitting from one gust to the next. The wind caught him up for a final flourish, a quick triple-spin before lighting down on the snow. He grinned, and held up his hand in victory.

Bunny just looked shocked, and like he'd only just kept from flinching by the skin of his teeth. "Jack?!"

He leaned sideways on his staff, balance thrown a little off by the inoperable arm. "That's my name, don't wear it out." He grinned. "What's a warm-weather fellow like yourself doing in a place like this?"

"Warm-weather...?"

"Not my best, true, but give me a break. I had like, five seconds prep time."

Bunny looked confused, and finally relaxed out of his not-a-flinch- _really_ pose. "What - what're you doing here? Figured you'd go right off to fix the - your arm."

Jack sighed. _This_ was why he hadn't wanted to tell the other Guardians about his arm. Kids, tell them anything, as long as you didn't make a big deal about it they just accepted it and moved on. Adults, though, they got all awkward and weird about things. Jack told Jamie, the kid wanted to know if he could lift a car one-handed (no). Jack told Bunny and the others, and now Bunny couldn't stop looking at his right arm.

"Did, sort of. Permanent fix will need a lot more work. I just stopped by a friend's to get it more or less in one piece." Technically speaking, less, since there were a lot of gears that had fallen out, so there were more detached pieces than there were attached right now, but... details. "I've got a replacement at home, I'll swap 'em out."

_That_ got Bunny's attention away from his arm. "Your... home?" the overgrown rabbit asked, looking befuddled. "It's nearby?"

"Not even as the crow flies," Jack admitted. Beira, while an Irish Giantess, tended to spend her summers as far north as she could get, only a few miles away from North's Workshop. Jack, on the other hand, well... He lived a bit further away.

Little bit.

At least it wasn't the other side of the globe.

... Technically.

Bunny looked down at Jack's arm, and then around at the snow and ice surrounding them. A sudden gust of wind set him to shivering, shoulders hunched and arms wrapped around his torso. "Want a lift?" he asked, and flattened his ears. "Dunno why I went walkabout up here, 's freezing!"

Jack snorted. "We are in the north pole," he pointed out, even as he turned Bunny's offer over in his mind.

On the one hand, there was something about the offer that rankled a little bit; probably his pride. He'd taken care of himself for three centuries with only the most minimal of help, there was definitely a part of him that heard Bunny's offer and wanted to set it on fire, because he was _perfectly fine on his own, thank you very much_. On the other hand, the thought of flying all the way home with a dead arm was super-duper not appealing, and the faster he could swap out arms, the better.

All in all, pride could take a quick hike.

"Do you know where Macquarie Island is?" he asked, before Bunny could make another comment about the cold.

* * *

"And what've the locals said about this?" Bunny demanded, even as he leapt out of the rabbit hole. He looked murderous, or as good as, right up until the royal penguins noticed him and decided to take offense.

Loudly.

"C'mon, Bunny," Jack said, floating up above pecking height. "You can out walk 'em. My place is just over this way."

Bunny hissed at the birds, which had absolutely no effect on the bloody-minded things. "Wha - why are they - bugger off ye bloody - _hey_!" The last was said at a high pitch, and then Bunny jumped, clearing twelve feet in height and closer to sixteen in length. "That one pecked me!"

"Bunny. Man. They're like. Five pounds. Each." Jack drifted over to the rabbit, and bit his lip to hold in the giggles. "You're fine. You're not even bleeding."

"Filthy rat-bags lookin' for a blue," Bunny ranted, eyes squinted almost shut and lips curling to show his tiny little incisors. The hand gestures were especially violent-looking. "All ya wankers got fleas!" he yelled.

The penguins, unimpressed, went back to the important business of preening, presenting, and otherwise being penguins.

"Do I want to know what a wanker is?" Jack asked, before the giggles won and he had to stop for a moment and just laugh.

Bunny glowered at him. Somehow that was even funnier than his being mobbed by penguins. "Wankers are blokes who think they're clever, but they're really blithering idiots. And," he added, when Jack just grinned at him, "A wanker's also someone who, erm..."

The rabbit's nose flushed a darker pink, and he made a _very_ eloquent hand gesture in front of him. "Obsessively. But that's British."

"Probably pretty accurate, though." Jack squinted over at the penguins. "Hey, look at those two go!"

"Rather not."

Jack shrugged, and landed. "C'mon, we follow this path south. There's a high spot..." He looked around, and wrinkled his nose. "Well, sort of." Beach aside, the edges of the island were pretty steep, and if the land had only risen a little bit more, he'd have said the sea beat against cliffs instead of ledges. As it was, the spot he'd chosen as his home was at the top of what could only charitably be called a hill.

Since most of the rest of the island was more or less even, height-wise, with his chosen place, 'high spot' didn't really mean much.

Since he was pretty sure waves could and _did_ wash over the top of the island in winter storms, 'high- _anything'_ might be a bit generous.

Bunny followed Jack down the rough path, grumbling. Any other time, Jack was sure, Bunny would be examining the local plant life and probably making notes in a notebook, even if he didn't take any samples. He'd seen it happen enough times before to be fairly confident. This time, though, Bunny was right at Jack's heels and seemed only just aware that the ground was covered in humps of tussock-grass and other stuff Jack recognized by sight, but didn't know the name of.

The path turned north, so he left it and headed south. It was fairly easy; nothing grew above ankle-level, and the grass wasn't long enough or strong enough to tangle around his feet. It was just edging into autumn, all two weeks of it here, and from the looks of things most of the birds were gone. Or at least, the nests were empty.

"You never answered my question," Bunny said, after several minutes of quiet.

"Question?"

"What do the locals think about you living here?"

Jack turned and walked backwards. "Bunny, there aren't any local spirits. Even sea-spirits tend to steer clear of this place. The island isn't close enough to even New Zealand for those spirits, and it's not close enough to the Antarctic for them. The only locals are the penguins, the seals, and the gulls, and let me tell you they do not care. Long as I don't poke around their babies, they don't even notice me."

Bunny blinked at him, before looking around with what Jack suspected was a new awareness. He liked the island - the warmest it had ever gotten was fifty-seven degrees, and that was a record. The rest of the time it hovered around forty degrees in the summer and thirty-four degrees in winter. Perfect for _him_ ; as an added bonus, the island was south of the equator. When it was too hot up in North America, he could just stick around at home and enjoy the July snow.

But it was a _tiny_ island, and humans hadn't ever set foot here before 1810, and even then they hadn't _stayed_. Spirits weren't a chicken-or-the-egg question, there had to be humans and their stories before there could be spirits. That was just how it _worked_.

"So how'd you end up building here?" Bunny asked. "No woody plants...?"

"Nope. Everything had to be imported." And oh boy how fun that was. Not. It wasn't like he was North or the Snow Queen or any kind of wizard at all. Teleportation was not one of his powers. "I got some help, a few spirits owed me enough favours to make it possible." He gestured towards the south end of the island again. They were almost at the edge of the spells that kept his home invisible and - at least when it came to mortals - intangible.

It was a _really small_ island.

Bunny eyed him, and then nodded. "I thought... Well, I thought most spirits, and you, that they...?" He trailed off just before they passed through the spells, and at that point he stopped, staring.

Jack grinned. It wasn't much to look at, just a narrow, three-story tower with something of a lean-to on one side. It was made out of blocks that looked a bit like ice, a bit like stone, mostly just very pale gray. On the infrequent occasions the sky wasn't covered in clouds and the sun could shine down, it could get a little blinding, but that rarely happened.

"Not what I expected," Bunny said at last.

"What were you expecting?" Jack prodded the rabbit forwards. "An igloo?"

Bunny glared at him, but didn't pull away. "Something other than a wizard's tower."

Jack considered that, all the way to the door. "I got it from a wizard," he admitted. "I think he only knew how to build on one design."

He waved Bunny through the door, and followed after. It was dark inside, the lights having turned off. A quick touch to the panel beside the door though, and they turned on, slowly increasing the light level so their eyes could adjust.

Bunny looked around sooner than Jack expected, but maybe he just did better with low lighting than Jack did. It'd fit with the whole rabbit thing. At first he looked confused, but then the confusion turned to awe, and he walked into the center of the room.

"You've got a lot of books," he said, slowly turning in place to get a good look at them all.

Jack closed the door, and laughed. "I know, right? I didn't mean to collect so many, but next thing I knew, bam! I don't think I've even read half of these, though I keep meaning to."

Bunny knocked into the chair - the _lone_ chair, actually - and sat down. "I think I've misjudged you," he said, tone of voice somewhat awed.

"Figured I'd be some mostly-feral illiterate?" Jack asked, somehow more amused than annoyed at the thought. For lack of other seating options, he plopped down on his bed.

"Well, no, but -" Bunny paused, and made a face. "Jack? Is that your _bed_?"

He looked down at the trundle, and then back up. "Uh, yeah? Why?"

"Why's it right next to the door?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Macquarie Island is a tiny little island about halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica, and I cannot say this enough, it is TINY. It's a state reserve and on the World Heritage List. The entire Royal Penguin population shows up on this one island during breeding season. There is a base there, belonging to the Australian Antarctic Division (yes, Australia and Antarctic, it seems a bit of an oxymoron) and there's only about twenty to forty people at one time.  
> Average temperature is about 40.8 degrees F in July to about 47.8 in January. Technically above freezing, but considering it's one of the cloudiest places on earth (only 856 hours of sunshine per year!) and it tends to rain frequently, I sure wouldn't want to be there out of doors for very long.  
> Plants run towards lichens, mosses, and certain kinds of grasses and herbs, though apparently there's also two kinds of orchids that grow there too. Lots of seals, the royal penguins as mentioned, gulls, king penguins, southern rockhopper penguins and gentoo penguins will nest there as well.  
> And, so far as all evidence shows, no human had set foot on the island before British-Australian explorer Frederick Hasselborough accidentally found the place, and realized how many fur-and-blubber animals there were to be exploited.  
> If you google the island, and zoom out, it quickly turns into a barely-visible spec.  
> You can blame CleverCorgi for Jack living here. -grin-
> 
> And also, this is the last of the pre-written chapters. I may have started thinking of plot, but the winter blahs have got me good. Right now, it's almost all I can do to get a chapter of wolfy written and posted every week. I haven't even touched my original story in... ugh, months. So... consider this a promise that I WILL continue the story, and in the meantime, Wolfy!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure what to properly title this story, not sure what sort of summary it should have... but what the heck, enjoy.  
> This story is currently unfinished and I don't know when I'll have the time, energy, or brainpower TO finish it. I suppose I should start by figuring out some kind of plot...


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